Design and Features
Very pocket, weighs only 3.8 ounces SH100 measuring 0.7 inches thin and thick, 2.1 inches and 3.7 inches long. Offers a touch-screen controls plus a few physical buttons for mission critical operations: Zoom In / Screen, Shutter Release Out, Rotate, and Home. UI on the SH100 is more colorful than most touch screen cameras like the Canon PowerShot ELPH 500 HS ($ 229.99, 4 stars), looks more like a cell phone Samsung Galaxy, complete with applications such as colored buttons with a black background. There are children pages of this application to swipe through, including shooting mode, color mode Wi-Fi effects of some functions.
The 26 to 130mm (35mm equivalent), 5x optical zoom lens has no optical stabilization and a corresponding aperture f/3.3-f/5.9. Most cameras in its price range offers optical image stabilization, which shifts the lens or sensor to adjust the camera shake to help reduce blur. Without this feature, you need to shoot with faster shutter speeds or higher ISO sensitivity to prevent blur. In a well-lit conditions, such as outdoors when the sun shines bright, it's generally not a problem, but the room you have to use a slow shutter to get the same amount of light to form images on the sensor. The 26 to 130mm (35mm equivalent), 5x optical zoom lens has a corresponding aperture f/3.3-f/5.9 and, as mentioned above, there is no optical stabilization. Most cameras in its price range offers optical image stabilization, which shifts the lens or sensor to adjust the camera shake to help reduce blur. This is helpful when you shoot in low light without flash, because the shots typically require slow shutter speed because the sensor must be exposed to a longer amount. Stabilization of the shift lens that makes your pictures come out crisp. Without it, you significantly increase the likelihood end up with blurry pictures in a photo shoot scenario.
3-inch LCD touchscreen works well, and gives a good navigation experience. This is just responding to the touch at a time, though, there is no support for multitouch, so you can not pinch or zoom. The screen just 230k points, the standard for cameras in this price range. The screen feels a bit cramped when shooting at full resolution because the image has a 4:3 aspect ratio, but the screen is a 16:9 wide-screen view of life is only 2.5 of the 3-inch screen, pillarboxed by black bars on each side. Editors Choice 'Kodak EasyShare M580 is ($ 199.95, 4 stars) 3-inch, 230k-dot screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio so that you can use the entire screen when shooting in full resolution.
Samsung has gone above and beyond with Wi-Fi on the SH100. Some use is a bit gimmicky, but some are very useful. You can email photos directly from the camera (although they were downsized from 14 - to 2-megapixel resolution). This feature is easy to use, thanks to the camera's address book. You can also upload photos to Facebook, seeing your album upload, and comment on your photos directly from camera. Videos can be uploaded directly to YouTube, but the limited resolution of 320 by 240, a major downgrade from the top of the camera resolution of 1280 x 720. These cameras can act as a DLNA server via an application called AllShare, allowing DLNA devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network browsing, downloading, and even play back images and video on the camera.
You can automatically send photos and video to your Windows PC wirelessly, as you can do with the Eye-Fi card X2 Mobile SD (79.99, 4 stars). The camera is smart enough to only transfer new photos, so you will not have a lot of duplicate or override commands ending on your computer. You need your computer to be connected to a Wi-Fi is the same as the camera and to have special software installed (included with the SH100), but it can wake your computer from sleep mode or completely rule it every time you start shooting. This feature works perfectly with my Windows 7 laptop.
Finally, and most impressively, you can use to control the SH100 Samsung smartphone and use the phone as a viewfinder. Currently this application is only available for cell phones Samsung Galaxy, but Samsung says that could change in the future. If you go to market Android on Samsung Android phones and look for "Remote Viewfinder," you can find and download the free application. When you load it and set the SH100 to work with these features, both devices will be connected and view live screen will appear on the phone. You can take pictures, control the optical zoom, and set the timer, all from your smartphone. Android app also gives you the option to save photos on both SH100 and your phone. The whole system works very well and requires almost no setup.
SH100 can quickly snap a single image, with only the second half of the shutter lag. However, it is slow on both the up and take some pictures. According to our tests, SH100 take an average of 3.5 seconds from power up to the first shooting, and spending an average of 2.7 seconds between each shot.
In the PCMag labs we use Imatest suite to objectively measure the quality of the picture. In terms of sharpness, the camera at an average center-weighted 1876 lines per picture height. It is impressive, given a point and shoot that costs twice as much, Canon PowerShot S95 ($ 399.99, 4 stars), produced 1858 lines. But as cameras $ 200 a lot, low light capability is very limited. SH100 can shoot up to ISO 400 while keeping noise levels below 1.5 percent (the threshold at which a visible image is usually noisy). Canon PowerShot S95 to levels below 1.5 percent all the way up to ISO 1600. It is similarly priced Canon PowerShot ELPH 100 HS ($ 199.99, 3.5 stars) offered by the weighted average of the center of the 1692 lines per picture height, and kept the noise level below 1.5 per cent up to ISO 1600. Again, because the SH100 has no mechanical image stabilization, it hurts his ability to shoot in low light.
Although all Wi-Fi is a nice trick, Connectivity on SH100 is not great. The camera offers a single port with a proprietary cable to connect to a computer USB port. Given the camera is writing to the microSD card rather than a standard SD card, you have three choices: do not lose the cable, simply transfer the photos via Wi-Fi, or get a microSD to SD card adapter for use with a card reader.
The SH100 Samsung may be suitable for you if you're a casual shooter who wants, automatic wireless transfer, but this feature comes at the expense of basic features: image stabilization. If you want to do any low-light shooting without flash, this camera is definitely not for you. If you are interested in Wi-Fi capability, try EyeFi card, which will work with a camera with SD slot, and wireless can back up photos to your computer and transfer photos to Android or IOS devices.
pros
Sharp images. Strong wireless transfer feature. Can use the screen on the Samsung Galaxy as a remote viewfinder.
cons
Poor low light performance. Slow boot and recycle times. Transfer wireless video to YouTube is limited to QVGA resolution.
bottom Line
The SH100 Samsung offer wireless sharing some interesting features, such as tight integration with Samsung Android phone. But the image noise and lack of optical image stabilization limit the appeal of this pocket camera.
Type Compact
Megapixels 12.1 MP
Media Format micro SDHC
Battery Type Supported Lithium Ion
35-mm Equivalent (Wide) 26 mm
35-mm Equivalent (Telephoto) 130 mm
Optical Zoom 5 x
LCD size 3 inches
LCD dots 230000
Video Resolution Yes
Boot time 3.53 seconds
Recycle time 2.73 seconds
Lines Per Picture Height 1876
